Home is Where the Heart is
by DeceasedSoul
Summary: Non-epilogue compliant. Trio friendship fic. No pairings. After the war, Ron, Hermione and Harry find a place for the three of them, where nothing else can intrude.


Title: Home is where the heart is

Fandom: Harry Potter

Pairings: None (past H/G)

Rating: PG

Summary: Non-epilogue compliant. Trio friendship fic. No pairings. After the war, Ron, Hermione and Harry find a place for the three of them, where nothing else can ever intrude.

* * *

They live alone. The three of them exist in a timeless bubble it seems. Owls can batter at the wards, but they'll never get through. Is what they've sacrificed, worth the gain? The world says it isn't, but they say it is.

_Love is worth whatever you give for it._

None of them remember how it started. Did Hermione start crying one day and for too long forget how to stop? Did the pain in Harry's leg from a cruelly cast cursebring it all too plainly to him that he will never play Quidditch professionally, or hunt down Dark Wizards as an Auror? Or did Ron realise one day that there was nothing that mattered more to him, than his two best friends.

_They don't share a mind, but sometimes Ron thinks they must share a heart and a soul, because when they're separated, they don't feel whole._

* * *

There are whispers. How can there not be? Rita Skeeter hints at an unhealthy relationship between the three, dredges up sources who claim that Harry, Ron and Hermione are more than best friends, that Ginny is a betrayed girlfriend, who wouldn't share her boyfriend with her brother and his best friend. They stop taking the Daily Prophet.

_Even though they don't share that, Harry secretly wonders why the world thinks it's their business if they do._

Sometimes Harry wonders what it would be like to feel desire again, but he can't muster up the energy. The heated kisses he shared with Ginny, have faded to pretty memories in the scrapbook of his mind. They sleep in one bed, as platonic as a basketful of kittens, warm limbs in flannel pyjamas that remind them all of childhood.

_It's true they know. Desire fades, and love is all that remains._

Occasionally people they know drop round. Molly and Arthur will appear, will scold and fuss them, and then leave them in peace and silence. They don't understand, they can't understand, but they can accept that there is healing that needs to be done. Molly is still hopeful that they will heal completely, and rejoin the world. Arthur is less sure, but pins his smile on as tightly as he can, and tries not to flinch at the sight of his youngest son.

_Molly thinks woefully of brown haired children with sparkling blue eyes, who would call her grandma, and sadly knows it will never happen._

They have everything they need. Three brooms, because Harry and Ron still love to fly, even if professional speeds are beyond them, and because they're trying to convince Hermione to trust them and let them teach her how to enjoy flying. She says she trusts them (_they know it's true) _not to let her fall. She doesn't trust them to save themselves if she did.

_They think secretly that it wouldn't be such a bad way to go._

* * *

A library, because Hermione has never stopped learning, and never stopped teaching, and in this solitude she can try things she's never thought possible. Harry loves the scent of the books, and the knowledge that Hermione is there, a comforting presence, something that never changes. Ron likes to look at Hermione curled up with a massive book, and Harry on the floor with his eyes closed, and know that there is nothing else in the world he could ask for.

_The world can narrow to one room sometimes if the right people are in it._

It isn't perfect by any means. Ron and Hermione sometimes pick fights, and Harry who can't bear there to be anything but love, will sit and shiver through them, until after six months he realises that this cannot shatter them, that if Voldemort can't, then an argument over dinner won't. Or sometimes Harry will brood over what was lost in the war, and it'll take a hug or a pat to bring him out of it and make it the past once more.

_Perfection is different for everyone, and that's no different for the three of them._

Life is confined to this cottage now, and Harry could never want it a different way. Ginny had told him firmly that this would kill all three of them, that they would never grow and mature beyond this point, beyond this co-dependence on the unconditional love and support that they gave one another. People need conflict to _change _and become who they were meant to be.

_That might be true. But they've had conflict enough for a lifetime. They've earned this._

* * *

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